Dose prediction of organs at risk in patients with cervical cancer receiving brachytherapy using needle insertion based on a neural network method

Abstract Objective A neural network method was employed to establish a dose prediction model for organs at risk (OAR) in patients with cervical cancer receiving brachytherapy using needle insertion. Methods A total of 218 CT-based needle-insertion brachytherapy fraction plans for loco-regionally advanced cervical cancer treatment were analyzed in 59 patients. The sub-organ of OAR was automatically generated by self-written MATLAB, and the volume of the sub-organ was read. Correlations between D2cm3 of each OAR and volume of each sub-organ—as well as high-risk clinical target volume for bladder, rectum, and sigmoid colon—were analyzed. We then established a neural network predictive model of D2cm3 of OAR using the matrix laboratory neural net. Of these plans, 70% were selected as the training set, 15% as the validation set, and 15% as the test set. The regression R value and mean squared error were subsequently used to evaluate the predictive model. Results The D2cm3/D90 of each OAR was related to volume of each respective sub-organ. The R values for bladder, rectum, and sigmoid colon in the training set for the predictive model were 0.80513, 0.93421, and 0.95978, respectively. The ∆D2cm3/D90 for bladder, rectum, and sigmoid colon in all sets was 0.052 ± 0.044, 0.040 ± 0.032, and 0.041 ± 0.037, respectively. The MSE for bladder, rectum, and sigmoid colon in the training set for the predictive model was 4.779 × 10−3, 1.967 × 10−3 and 1.574 × 10−3, respectively. Conclusion The neural network method based on a dose-prediction model of OAR in brachytherapy using needle insertion was simple and reliable. In addition, it only addressed volumes of sub-organs to predict the dose of OAR, which we believe is worthy of further promotion and application.